The inactive gas introducing facility described above is used for e.g. introducing an amount of inactive gas into a container accommodating a substrate (such as a semiconductor wafer) for the purpose of restricting unwanted adhesion and accumulation of particles on the substrate thereby to avoid deterioration of the substrate from its proper state due to oxygen and/or humidity.
More particularly, in association with the introduction of inactive gas through the gas feed opening of the container accommodating the substrate, gas present inside the container will be discharged to the inside of a storage space through a gas discharge opening of the container and the interior of the container will be filled with the introduced inactive gas eventually. Therefore, unwanted adhesion of particles on the substrate and deterioration of the substrate from its proper state due to oxygen and/or humidity are restricted.
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2001-338971 (Patent Document 1) discloses an example of such inactive gas introducing facility. With this inactive gas introducing facility, a plurality of storing sections as storage sections are disposed in juxtaposition along the vertical and right/left directions within a box-like storage and each storing section includes a gas feed pipe for feeding nitrogen gas as inactive gas.
Though not detailed in Patent Document 1 above, the interior of the box-like storage corresponds to “a storage space partitioned from the outside” and into this box-like storage, the nitrogen gas is discharged from a container.
In the inactive gas introducing facility, there is generally provided an inspection door for allowing access by a worker to/from the inside of the storage space in order to carry out various inspection operations.
In case such inspection door is provided, in order to restrict discharge of inactive gas to the inside of the storage space through the gas discharge opening of the container stored in the storage section, it is conceivable to arrange such that feeding of inactive gas is stopped in response to opening of the inspection door.
However, with the simple arrangement of stopping feeding of inactive gas in response to opening of the inspection door, inspection operations with feeding of inactive gas, such as inspection operation of feeding state of inactive gas to the gas feed opening of the container stored in the storing section, inspection operation of the discharge state of the inactive gas through the gas discharge opening of the container are not possible.